The five-star showman
QUESTION Can you have more than one star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?
CROONER Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, has the unique distinction of having been awarded stars in the five fields recognised on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: motion pictures, TV, radio, music and live performance.
Autry was a top money-making entertainer and businessman. He retired from showbusiness in 1964, having made over than 100 films and 600 records.
When he died aged 91 in 1998, his obituary read: ‘He was enormously successful at almost anything he tried – radio, records, songwriting, TV, real estate and business – as well as movies and museums.’
Bob Hope and singer Tony Martin are next with four stars each.
Thirty-three performers, including Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Perry Como and Jack Benny, have three stars.
The Walk of Fame was conceived in 1953 by E.M. Stuart, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, to ‘maintain the glory of a community whose name means glamour and excitement in the four corners of the world’.
A string of lawsuits prevented the walk’s inauguration until 1960. By that time, 1,529 names had been selected to be immortalised in stars embedded in the pavement of Hollywood Boulevard. It was first proposed that each star feature a caricature of the celebrity. However, this was changed in favour of five brass symbols: a classic film camera, TV, phonograph record, radio microphone and comedy/tragedy masks.
Actress Joanne Woodward is often considered to be the first person to receive a star on the Walk of Fame, perhaps because she was the first to be photographed with hers. However, she was one of eight selected randomly from the original list that were laid concurrently.
Today, the Walk of Fame extends for 15 blocks and is 2.1km long.
Harry Maddison, London SE9.
QUESTION What foreign film director has shot the most films in Ireland?
THREE Johns have directed the most films shot wholly or partly in Ireland. They are John Boorman, John Huston and John Ford.
Englishman Boorman, 88, who has been a Wicklow resident for many years now, holds the record with five movies filmed here. They are 2019’s The Professor And The Madman, starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn; 2006’s The Tiger’s Tail, starring Brendan Gleeson and Kim Cattrall; 2001’s The Tailor Of Panama, starring Pierce Brosnan and Gleeson again; 1998’s The General, with Gleeson in the lead role as Martin Cahill; and 1981s epic, Excalibur, with a young Gabriel Byrne, Liam Neeson and Helen Mirren.
The other two Johns, Ford and Huston, were both Irish-American and they share the honour of having shot three films apiece here. Both were legends in the business during their lifetimes.
John Huston’s first film shot in Ireland was Moby Dick, starring Gregory Peck and it was released in 1956. It was based on Herman Melville’s novel and the location filming was done in the harbour area of Youghal in east Co. Cork.
The next film Huston shot here was Sinful Davey, released in 1969, described as an adventure, crime and comedy movie. It starred Huston’s daughter, Angelica.
The last film that Huston made a movie in Ireland was The Dead, released in 1987. It was based on James Joyce’s short story of the same name, set in the Dublin of 1904. Once more, the cast included Huston’s daughter, Angelica. John Huston died that year, so the film was released posthumously.
Huston had close connections with Ireland and lived at St Cleran’s, near Craughwell, Co. Galway, for 18 years.
The other Irish-American director who was even more obsessed with Irish themes was John Ford, who was born in 1894 and who had a film career of remarkable longevity, extending from the early 1920s until the late 1960s.
Ford’s father, John Augustine Feeney, had been born in Spiddal, Co. Galway, while his mother, Barbara Curran, came from the Aran Islands. They emigrated to America. John Ford’s real name was John Martin (‘Jack’) Feeney and he often said that his real given names were Seán Aloysius.
He made a total of seven films that had Irish themes; four were shot in the US, while three were made in Ireland.
His first Irish film, Shamrock Hardship, was a silent film, a romance, that had a running time of just over one hour. It was made in the US in 1926.
In 1928, Ford made Hangman’s House, a romantic drama set in Co. Wicklow. It was filmed in seven weeks, but like the previous film, was made in America.
It represented the first appearance in a John Ford film of Westerns legend, John Wayne.
In 1935, Ford made his third film with an Irish theme called The Informer, an IRA drama, which was released to great acclaim.
It also won John Ford his first Oscar as best director.
Two years later, in 1937, he made another Irish film, The Plough And The Stars, with its origins in Seán O’Casey’s work of the same name. It was also made in the US.
During the Second World War, John Ford served in the US Navy, for which he made many documentaries.
After that war, he continued movie-making with Irish themes, but starting shooting his films in Ireland.
His 1952 film, The Quiet Man proved to be a tremendous hit, despite the scepticism of Hollywood about whether the film could ever be successful. In the event, in its first year of release, it made $4million just in the US and has been a worldwide favourite ever since. The film starred John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara and was shot mostly on location in the west of Ireland, especially in and around Cong in Co. Mayo.
Ford’s next Irish-made film was The Rising Of The Moon in 1957. It consisted of three episodes, one of which was based on Lady Gregory’s 1921 play of the same name.
Ford’s last Irish- made film came in the mid-1960s, with Young Cassidy, based on the life story of Seán O’Casey.
Production on this film started in 1965, with John Ford directing, but he soon became too ill to continue, mainly because he was drinking so heavily. So Jack Cardiff had to take over the production. Ford died in 1973.
These three directors, John Boorman, John Huston and John Ford, made immense contributions to film-making in Ireland.
Many other foreign directors only shot one film in Ireland, such as the renowned British director, David Lean, who made the 1970 film Ryan’s Daughter here with much location work done on the Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry.
The celebrated American director, Stanley Kubrick, made the 1975 film Barry Lyndon here. But the three Johns stand head and shoulders above all these other foreign filmmakers in terms of their long-term commitment to filmmaking in Ireland.
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